I’m continually amazed at how long ‘old’ internet posts and articles stick around. While doing some digging into into a Java AJAX library for work, I ran across an article I had written for Java Developer’s Journal in 2003 titled “Mobile Webservices with kSOAP.”

Granted, this is a archived soft-copy of the print magazine article I’d written, so one might expect it to have a bit of longevity. That said, it’s interesting to look back 14 years at the state-of-the-art Internet and mobile technologies and compare them to where we are today.

Tin-Can Canucks is officially on sale. Available through CreateSpace & Amazon you can find it online–and hopefully on the shelves of a book store near you.

The book’s foreword is by Vice-Admiral M.F.R. Lloyd, CMM, CD who is the current Chief of the Naval Staff and Commander of the Royal Canadian navy. It covers the history of the destroyer-type warship in the Canadian Navy from 1915 to 2016.

This post is another of a series of excerpts from my book Tin Can Canucks. As the book is still under development these posts should be considered as part of a work in progress. These excerpts are presented as they’ve been developed and may not be in chronological (or any logical) order.

The first Canadian warship to carry the name, HMCS Yukon was built by Burrard Dry Dock Ltd. of Vancouver, British Columbia. When she was commissioned she was the third of the Mackenzie-class to enter service with the Royal Canadian Navy.

She sailed from the west coast to Halifax on July 27th, 1963 and would operate out of that port for the next 17 months. On January 5th, 1965 she returned to Esquimalt to exchange crews with fellow Cadillac Destroyer HMCS Ottawa, which had been ordered to transfer to Halifax.

Cartoon about a collision between HMCS Yukon and USS Kitty Hawk.

Yukon, sister ship HMCS Mackenzie, and the supply ship HMCS Provider left Esquimalt on May 4th 1970, bound for Japan. The pair of Mackenzie-class destroyers arrived in Hakodate on May 22nd, while their compatriot Provider went instead to Yokosuka. During their deployment they undertook exercises with naval units from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The three Canadian ships also visited the ports of Kobe, Osaka, and Sasebo before returning home to Vancouver Island.[1]

After undergoing a mid-life refit in February of 1975, Yukon was transferred to Training Group Pacific where she took up the role of instructional vessel for Maritime Surface and Sub-surface (MARS) Officers. She underwent her DELEX life extension refit at Barrow Yarrow Inc. in Esquimalt staring May 28th, 1984, and had her hull and machinery repaired to bring her up to as close to as new vessel as practicable. The DELEX also saw replacement of sensor equipment no longer supported or maintained with more up to date equipment, and the addition of a set of lightweight ASW torpedo tubes.[2]Yukon returned to service on January 16th, 1985.

The next year, she was one of three Canadian warships to visit Australia in celebration of the Royal Australian Navy’s 75th Anniversary.

Paid off on December 3rd 1993, Yukon was eventually sold to the San Diego Oceans Foundation. On April 25th, 1999 she was towed from Vancouver, bound for San Diego where it was intended to sink her as a diver’s wreck on July 15th. She would sink at the intended site a day early however, due to rough weather.[3]

Vimy Ridge has always been of huge historical significance for me–it represented the coming-of-age of the Canadian Military, and, as General Rick Hillier might say, was the first visible occasion where Canada’s military ‘punched above its weight.’

For that reason, it’s been a dream of mine to visit Vimy and the other Canadian battlefields in France, from both the First World War and the Second Word War. Luckily, this year, I’ll be able to make it happen.

Along with my daughter (a Royal Canadian Sea Cadet) and my father we will be traveling to France to visit Paris, Juno Beach & Caen, Dieppe and of course Vimy Ridge–the last spot on Vimy Ridge Day on April 9th.

Most of my recent writings have been about the Royal Canadian Navy, but there will always be a special place in my heart for the Canadian Army–having served in a recce unit in my youth. In fact, my former unit’s predecessor the Prince Edward Island Light Horse landed as II Canadian Corps Security Company on Juno Beach, June 6th, 1944.

So it is my hope, over the coming week or so, to blog about this trip to France–both as a means to explore a country I’ve never been before, and perhaps highlight some history while I’m at it. Call it my Vimy Ridge Travelogue.

In the meantime, I would like to share a video from Veterans Affairs which leads into the Vimy Ridge Centennial. (I should also note that the featured image on this post is also from Veterans Affairs Canada)

Well, it’s now been several months since I was last able to post, and it’s been a crazy few months. I’m going to skip past some of the madness (but will be posting about it over on my Tin-Can Canucks website shortly), and instead focus on a very important date in Canadian Military history.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was fought in France during World War One between April 9th and April 12th, 1917. It was here that the Canadian Corps stormed the ridge and was able to recover a great amount of terrain from the Germans–terrain that British and French offensives had failed to recapture previously.

It’s often seen as the forge on which our country was made.

With the centenary of this monumental battle coming up in less than a month, there are obviously many activities and ceremonies marking this great battle, and even greater victory. April 9th is now known as Vimy Ridge Day, and that’s the date around which most of these events will be happening.

None so central though, than the ceremony that will be occurring at the Vimy Ridge Memorial in France.

This post is another of a series of excerpts from my book Tin Can Canucks. As the book is still under development these posts should be considered as part of a work in progress. These excerpts are presented as they’ve been developed and may not be in chronological (or any logical) order.

HMCS Saguenay and HMCS Skeena had steam turbine engines, one of which is seen here, that could drive them through the water at speeds of well over 30 knots (55 km/h).

The Canadian Government announced its intention to purchase two new destroyers in November 1927 to be built to Canadian specification in the United Kingdom. In February of 1928 two Canadian officers reviewed the plans for the new British Acasta (or A-class) destroyers. Several design changes were requested, including a more streamlined bridge structure and oil heating . In September 1928 the government tendered for the construction of these destroyers; fourteen British shipyards responded all of whom offered the necessary “Canadianized” fittings without appreciable extra cost. Of those fourteen Yarrow’s was the cheapest, but didn’t quite meet the specs laid down. Thornycroft’s bid was the next lowest at about £10,000 more, but their proposed machinery was much more compact and efficient. Thornycroft landed the contract to build HMCS Saguenay and Skeena, with both being laid down in late 1929. The total cost of the destroyers—including armament—would be £3,350,132

Saguenay would be the first made-to-order RCN warship when she was commissioned May 22, 1931 at Portsmouth. After her sister’s commissioning the two sailed for Halifax, and in September of 1931 she said up the Saguenay River to visit Chicoutimi.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Canadian destroyers like HMCS Saguenay, seen here entering a port in the Caribbean, conducted training exercises with ships from Britain’s Royal Navy.

Together with Champlain she took part in the Jacques Cartier Quartercenterary at Gaspe in August 1934 and in 1936 she escorted Great War veterans across the Atlantic to France for the dedication of the Vimy Memorial at Vimy Ridge. Along with her sister she would represent Canada at King George VI’s coronation the following year and in May 1939 she would escort the King and Queen up the St. Lawrence to Quebec City on their Canadian tour. This would be one of her last peacetime assignments.

Six days after the declaration of war, Saguenay and another of the River-class destroyers HMCS St. Laurent joined the escorting forces of convoy HX 1—the first fast convoy from Halifax to England. She spent the rest of the year and the early part of 1940 on patrol first from Kingston Jamaica and later from Halifax. In October 1940 she was assigned to Escort Group 10 based out of Greenock in Scotland. Two months later, while escorting convoy HG 47 from Gibraltar to England she was torpedoed by the Italian submarine Argo while west of Ireland. The torpedo had shattered the destroyer’s bows and killed 21 men, yet despite it all she made Barrow-in-Furness four days later under her own power. She wouldn’t be fit for service again until May of 1941.

HMCS Saguenay, photographed at the time of its commissioning in May 1931, was the first modern warship built specifically for the Royal Canadian Navy.

She put to sea to take part in screening the Home Fleet capital ships during the hunt for the Bismarck. After this she was recalled to Newfoundland, arriving in St Johns on June 7, 1941. In July she would escort Winston Churchill—aboard HMS Prince of Wales—from the conference with President Roosevelt in Placentia Bay to Iceland where she was detached to return to Newfoundland.

1942 was a hard year on the destroyer—it started in January when she suffered extensive storm damage which left her barely able to make it back to St John’s where she was laid up for three months for repairs. In November she was hit by the Panamanian freighter Azra severing her stern and causing the depth charges to detonate. The explosion sank the freighter, but luckily there were only two fatalities between both ships.

Deemed too expensive to repair her stern was sealed off and she was converted to a stationary training vessel and tender to HMCS Cornwallis. Ultimately paid off after VE Day, the first made-to-order Canadian destroyer went to International Iron & Metal in Hamilton for breaking in 1946.

Everyone I know hates popups. They always make me think of that old whack-a-mole game. People find them annoying, intrusive, repetitive and obnoxious. An exit intent popup are just another flavour.

Funny thing is, they work.

I started using them on my www.tincancanucks.com book website a couple of weeks ago when I released a sample chapter for download. Most of my traffic is driven by AdWords and tends to be new rather than returning at the moment. As a test, I set up a download page on the website for the sample chapter PDF and created an exit intent popup via Convify—an online service which you can integrate with your website.

Exit Intent Popup: How it Works

The way it works is that when someone comes to my homepage (or any other page in the website), when they go to close the browser window (or take another action that show’s they intend on exiting the site) this is intercepted with a popup:

They can click through to the download page, or they can click on “No Thanks” and then exit the site. There are a lot of ways to configure this exit intent behavior—you can trigger it based on time, number of pages visited, new vs. returning visitors etc.—and in my case I have it configured to show only once a day for any given visitor; that reduces the annoying factor to a reasonable amount I think.

Convify provides conversion metrics (it’s part of a larger digital marketing platform it looks like), and so far, in two weeks I’ve seen a 1% conversion rate. For a site with fairly small traffic this seems okay to me, and I’m not seeing anything indicating I’m driving traffic away—and the thing with an exit intent popup is that the visitor was leaving anyway, so it’s not likely to raise the exit rate, and even if it reduces my return visitor rate, at the moment that’s pretty small to begin with.

Fundamentally, this is no different from marketing automation gateway forms—in this case I’m not looking for personal information, and so may generate a higher conversion rate than if I was using a gateway form to capture contact info before the download.

And like gateway forms, it works—it drives conversions. In a marketing automation system, we can track these conversions and score the interactions. Like a gateway form an exit intent form is another tool in the marketing automation toolbox.

So, in my experience (anecdotal though it may be) I’m seeing increased visitor engagement, which is what I’m looking for for this site. The popup’s configuration to make it less annoying is a crucial part of its value though, and I think makes the difference between engagement and annoyance.

Exit Intent Popup: Roll Your Own

Now, if you want to use an Exit Intent popup yourself there’s no need to go with a service like Convify—especially if you already have a marketing automation platform. The ActiveConversion software for instance, will track goal page and URL-specific campaigns, and so can be used to track conversion from clicks in a popup. While the software doesn’t provide the capability to create the popups, that’s to be expected since it’s not a content management tool, and for those with a little jQuery experience, there’s an excellent tutorial for creating exit intent popups with jQuery which can be found here: http://beeker.io/exit-intent-popup-script-tutorial

Now some may ask: do I still find exit intent popups annoying?

Yes, yes I do.

Perhaps I’m a hypocrite for using them, but the facts are they work—even on me, and I’m one cynical digital marketer.

Like I said, I believe the critical part is to make them as engaging as possible with as little annoyance impact as possible. In my case above, I’m engaging the visitor with some interesting, useful content—promising the full story about the post-war RCN in the downloadable PDF. I’m asking them for an additional moment of their time—a couple more clicks—if they’re interested in the content.

(To catch my—admittedly few—readers up, I’ve recently moved positions to ActiveConversion, a Marketing Automation vendor who focuses on the industrial and manufacturing market segment. My position with ActiveConversion is as the Product Specialist, and so understanding the how, where and most importantly, why the software works and does what it does for our customers—and what pitfalls need to be avoided to be successful—is central to my role.

Read more about Marketing Automation for Industrial and Manufacturing customers at the ActiveConversion Blog.)

Recently, while doing some industry research I came across another Marketing Automation vendor’s State-of-the-Market report which, based on its executive summary looked interesting. As it was gated content I filled in the form, including the standard fist name, last name and email. They also requested a Company name (not uncommon); despite being a competitor I thought the research was of interest so I included our company name.

The form submission went through; the research report was emailed to me as well as a polite greeting—all pretty standard Marketing Automation behaviors. As a Marketing Automation vendor we eat our own dog food—so why wouldn’t a competitor? Made sense to me.

I’ve been involved with Marketing Automation for over a decade now—from coding, designing and developing a platform to training, implementation, evangelizing—I’ve seen the sausage getting made and know a bit about the pit-falls. The number one challenge most users of Marketing Automation face is a lack of content—scratch that, it’s a lack of relevant content. Too often drip emails will be too general, not specifically relevant to the conversation or flat-out incorrect. Sometimes it’s because one email is being used for multiple drip processes, or that the emails are slightly modified versions of the templates or canned content that came with the system.

If you know what you’re looking for, you can catch these pretty easily.

And that’s what happened with our competitor’s drip campaign. Three business days after I download the research report I received an email from the company, signed by a mid-level manager pitching me on marketing automation software and services. The email was pretty plain, but read well and I’m sure to most would look and sound like a personal response.

It wasn’t—and here’s how I knew: the email specifically said that the sender had done some research and had found our company and thought we might be facing sales challenges that could be solved by marketing automation. It’s was personalized with my name, and used our company name throughout.

For any other possible lead/company this email might have worked. But it was glaringly obvious that this was automated; that no research had been done and that in all likely hood no one was paying attention to the fact that I was in this nurture campaign. If they had done some research, and had paid attention they would have known that I was a competitor and not a potential lead. They would have known that I’m not unfamiliar with Marketing Automation and that I understand how it can help my business—and they would have known I’m unlikely to change marketing automation platforms.

Because no one was watching this, or really following up, this competitor ended up wasting at least 1 email (perhaps not much in the big picture financially) and looked pretty foolish. Worse yet would be if I clicked through on the links to schedule a consulting session—I’d be wasting valuable salesperson time and bandwidth (I didn’t). Because no one was paying attention to the “fit” of a lead like me—and not reviewing company names/personal names through Google or LinkedIn the entire ROI of the interaction with me was shot to hell.

This could have all been avoided if someone had reviewed my lead profile, actually done some research and flagged me as a poor fit/competitor.

While I don’t know for sure that this competing vendor’s product can provide company identification information (although in my case I provided the Company name) and the ability to search Google and LinkedIn (or other social media) for an identified lead to determine who they are and if they fit—the concepts are obviously universal.

(I will point out that the ActiveConversion software does provide those handy capabilities to allow users to research and flag leads who aren’t of value—like me)

Ultimately, in my mind this instance is that perfect example of where using Marketing Automation fails—it’s a powerful tool which can positively impact sales, marketing and efficiency but it’s not a silver bullet. Drip emails are not one-size-fits-all and the information provided by a Marketing Automation system is only of value if it’s used—and used properly—to enhance profiling and intelligence and focusing sales efforts on those leads most likely to become customers.

I’ve been working on Tin-Can Canucks for several years, and have been saturating myself with Canadian Destroyer history, and part of what I’ve found so fascinating is the parallels between modern defence policy and vessel procurement challenges in previous eras.

The story of the first made-to-order warships for the Canadian navy (HMCS Saguenay and HMCS Skeena) is one of particular interest, as it covers all the things I like best–the evolution of a soverign Canada, the growing confidence of a Navy which had only recently avoided the budgetary axe, and a look into the early career of men who would make their mark on Canadian Naval policy in the not too distant future.

Tin-Can Canucks is almost too small a venue for all these stories, and I’ve had the immense privilege of seeing a separate article about these two ships published in the 2016 Summer issue of Canadian Naval Review. Based on research done for the book, but separately written with a different view on it’s modern relevance I like to think it provides a good sense of the stories the books will present–even if from a more nostalgic perspective.

If you’re interested in current (and future) naval policy Canadian Naval Review is an excellent place to start–I’ve used it several times for reference in writing Tin-Can Canucks.

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Don't make me hunt you down. Seriously though, short of wholesale copying of my content (or ripping off any book titles etc.) let me know if you want/need an excerpt so I don't feel the need to track you to your lair and urinate on my words to mark my territory.